The savage was a great deal cleverer than we are. He accomplished by shrewd calculation what he could not do by force.
He invented the idea of “taboo.”
Perhaps the word “invented” is not the right expression. Such things are rarely the product of a sudden inspiration. They are the result of long years of growth and experiment. Let that be as it may, the wild men of Africa and Polynesia devised the taboo, and thereby saved themselves a great deal of trouble.
The word taboo is of Australian origin. We all know more or less what it means. Our own world is full of taboos, things we simply must not do or say, like mentioning our latest operation at the dinner table, or leaving our spoon in our cup of coffee. But our taboos are never of a very serious nature. They are part of the handbook of etiquette and rarely interfere with our own personal happiness.
To primitive man, on the other hand, the taboo was of the utmost importance.
It meant that certain persons or inanimate objects had been “set apart” from the rest of the world, that they (to use the Hebrew equivalent) were “holy” and must not be discussed or touched on pain of instant death and everlasting torture. A fairly large order but woe unto him or her who dared to disobey the will of the spirit-ancestors.
Whether the taboo was an invention of the priests or the priesthood was created to maintain the taboo is a problem which had not yet been solved. As tradition is much older than religion, it seems more than likely that taboos existed long before the world had heard of sorcerers and witch-doctors. But as soon as the latter had made their appearance, they became the staunch supporters of the idea of taboo and used it with such great virtuosity that the taboo became the “verboten” sign of prehistoric ages.
When first we hear the names of Babylon and Egypt, those countries were still in a state of development in which the taboo counted for a great deal. Not a taboo in the crude and primitive form as it was afterwards found in New Zealand, but solemnly transformed into negative rules of conduct, the sort of “thou-shalt-not” decrees with which we are all familiar through six of our Ten Commandments.
Needless to add that the idea of tolerance was entirely unknown in those lands at that early age.